Formatting Partitions

Fig. 1.19

At this stage you have to pay attention not to format your windows partition if you are setting up a dual boot system. The new partition that you just created should only be marked. After you verified, click OK to proceed with the format. After formatting is complete the file systems are permanently written to the disk and will be initialized every time the system boots up.

Selection of Software Packages

If you are aware of what you are doing, this is the most important part and reason of why you should have a big hard drive. The packages selection in the following picture is the most essential either for workstation or server. A 2.0 GB hard drive is not enough for all the default packages. Each package on the following picture has a subset of packages, which you can select next during the installation. Depending on what system you are setting up, you can select a few packages or select them all. The partitions you created in the previous section are perfect either for workstation or for a server machine. If you don't plan to use this machine as a server, of course you don't need to install the server packages. You can still add them later at any time.

Fig. 1.20

Usually when I set up a machine, I select only what I need from this screen and when my installation is complete I still verify and stop all services that I don't need.
Let's go ahead and select the following software packages from table 1.3. Note that some of them you may not need... but it is good to know what they are. For example if you don't do programming; you don't need the development package or the game package if you don't play games. Or perhaps you want to learn more then you should install the documentation.

I suggest that you install those (doted) packages presented, so that you can see and experience the true Joys of Linux